Production, consumers' convenience, and cynical economies
The case of Uber in Buenos Aires
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2049015 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Juan Manuel Del Nido (0000-0003-3387-2473, University of Cambridge, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 8 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 326-336 |
| Publication date | 2021-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Economic Anthropology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2330-4847 • E-ISSN: 2330-4847 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1002/sea2.12208 |
| OpenAlex | W3157756086 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 22 |
Based on twelve months of fieldwork into Uber's conflict in Buenos Aires, Argentina, this article examines convenience's role in the emergence of what I call cynical economies: a method and logic of production expressly organized on the awareness of a distance the very rhetoric of convenience exacerbates. For the city's middle class, convenience defined a democratizing, empowering arena of private relations away from the hierarchies and exclusions proper to the private sphere. As Uber's ratings translated consumers' experiences into a political economy for the trade, drivers organized the production of the ride knowing that whatever exceeded the immediate intelligibility of the experience could not matter in that political economy. In the process, cynical economies delegitimize complex and inherently social categories like risk, responsibility, and liability, as well as the social sphere that frames them, without offering an alternative order in return
Business · Economics · Economy · Liability · Market economy · Moral economy · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Rhetoric · Digital Economy and Work Transformation · Global trade, sustainability, and social impact · Law · Political Economy and Marxism
The Rise and Fall of Human Rights
Faces of the State
Citizenship and Social Class
The Social Life of Things
Meanings of the Market
The Allure of Capitalism
The Social Life of Politics
Irony, Cynicism and the Chinese State
The Cultural Politics of Emotion
Economic Action and Social Structure
Managing preschool the Lean way. Evaluating work processes by numbers and colours
Uberland
Retreat from Politics
Ascertaining Deadly Harms
The Moral Neoliberal
Inscription
When the state is (n)ever present
On Historical Exhaustion
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0.6 |
| Citation span | 2021 - 2024 (4) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |